A mechanic approached and said, “Better get on board, sir. We’re gonna crank ’em up in a second.”
“Give me a minute,” Jock replied. He’d abandoned any thought of holding her in his arms, kissing her, or sharing a moment of conversation. He’d settle for much less now:
I just need to see her. Just a glimpse to know she’s okay. That’s all I ask.
The right-hand engine of the little C-45 transport plane sputtered to life, sounding as if it, too, had little interest in setting out on this trip.
He gave one last, longing look toward the airfield’s access road, one flicker of hope still burning that a jeep, a truck, a bicycle—anything—would change course and come racing across the ramp toward the plane…
But none did.
Jock flung his bags up into the plane as the left-hand engine now popped and rumbled to life. Hesitantly, he ascended the short ladder to the little tail-dragger’s cabin door. At the top step, he turned to take one last look across the ramp…
Through the blur of the whirling propeller, there was a deuce-and-a-half racing toward them head-on. As it drew close, the GI behind the wheel altered course, driving a wide circle around the aircraft. The truck swung around the plane’s twin tails and stopped aft of the left wingtip, just a few quick steps from the cabin door. The cab’s passenger-side door popped open…
And Jillian jumped down to the ramp.
She looked like she’d been in a brawl. Her skirt and blouse were splotched with mud. There were bruises of vivid purple and yellow on her arms and shins.
Jock’s leg didn’t betray him as he sprinted to her.
Locked in embrace, she spoke right into his ear to be heard over the din of the plane’s engines. “I was afraid this wasn’t your aircraft. And that storm on the way…”
“Honey, are you okay? You’re all banged up. What the hell happened?”
“We had a bit of a wreck. Only the jeep got hurt, though. No worries.”
With time so short, he blurted the unfinished business burdening his mind: “I’m so sorry, honey. I had no business flying those missions and I promise—”
She silenced him with a kiss. Then, stroking his face soothingly, she said, “Baby, baby…we already talked about this on the telephone. You don’t need—”
“No…I promise I won’t fly any more missions, Jill. I’ve got no business being in action anymore.”
She kissed him once more and said, “Like I told you before, Yank, don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
For just a moment, the contentment of their embrace cancelled every calamity the world had to offer. It even cancelled the racket of the airplane engines idling just feet away.
She asked, “Taking your Atabrine?”
“Every damn day. You?”
“Of course. Malaria is just one of the many little joys we’ve come to share.”
“You know, I’m real proud of what you did at Aitape, Jill…”
“Thanks, baby, but I was just doing my job.”
“But—”
The mechanic tapped Jock on the shoulder. “Don’t mean to intrude, sir, but we gotta go, right now!”
One long, last kiss.
As he turned toward the plane, Jock said, “But no more of that cloak and dagger stuff for you, okay?”
She smiled and gave him a thumbs up.
Then she spoke her reply, softly enough he couldn’t possibly hear it over the sawmill buzz of the revving engines: “I won’t make promises I can’t keep, either.”
Halfway up the cabin stairs, he remembered another piece of unfinished business he’d completely forgotten: “THAT MAPMAKER YOU MENTIONED ON THE LANDLINE THE OTHER DAY…DID HE CHANGE HIS MIND ABOUT WORKING FOR US?”
Jillian shook her head and replied, “AFRAID NOT…AND IT WASN’T A HIM. IT WAS A HER.”
Watching him climb the boarding steps, she thought, Bloody hell. His leg…he’s trying to hide it but it’s acting up again.
The plane was airborne before Jock made the connection: Holy shit! That mapmaker…her last name isn’t Dyckman by any chance, is it?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Token resistance were the words Lieutenant Colonel Billingsley used to describe the Japanese infantry’s defense of the Mokmer airfields. That might have been technically accurate, but the Japanese guns embedded high in the bluffs to the east were taking a terrific toll on the American tanks. Master Sergeant Patchett looked away in disgust as yet another Stuart rolling across the southern airstrip was knocked out. The enemy round blew the turret cleanly off the chassis, leaving nothing but a flaming hulk, spewing clouds of thick black smoke and a fireworks display of cooked-off rounds.
That makes five we lost in the last hour. Counting the one we lost on the road, half of what we hit the beach with this morning is gone already. And ain’t nobody or nothing touching them guns up there. At least my boys got the good sense to stay the hell away from them tanks and not get roasted right along with ’em. Gonna be a long fucking night.
Colonel Billingsley stood beside his jeep, talking on its radio. When his conversation was finished, he told Patchett, “I’m pulling the tanks back for now.”
Patchett thought, First smart thing I heard the man say all day.
But then Billingsley added, “So my soldiers will just have to finish taking these three airfields without them.”
“You mean after those guns up there are knocked out, right, sir?”
“Negative, Sergeant. Between the battalion’s position here and Able Company’s above them on the ridge, we’ve got those guns isolated. They’ll run out of ammo soon enough. We’re going to press on and take these airfields before nightfall, per the ops plan.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but that’s just faith talking. What the hell good is it to take the airfields if we can’t show our faces on ’em without getting our asses blown up? Ain’t no airplanes gonna use them, that’s for damn sure. We gotta take out them guns before we do anything else.”
“The job of taking out those guns is allocated to the Navy, Sergeant. We’ve got all the fire support we need from them.”
Patchett was losing patience. “Sir…the Navy’s had just a couple li’l ol’ destroyers parked waaaay the hell offshore and outta harm’s way all day long, trying to duel with them guns long distance. They ain’t knocked out shit yet. Ain’t even come close.”
A picture of unjustified confidence, Billingsley replied, “That’s why I’ve called in supplemental air support. They’ll plaster those gun positions with rockets and fifty caliber.”
“With all due respect, sir, not a one of them ideas is worth dog squat…and they might even get Able Company boys on top of that ridge killed. How about we get ourselves a couple or three artillery pieces and plaster them guns with direct fire? They won’t be missing, neither…not from this close. We can bring ’em in and hide ’em in this treeline right here come nightfall, when them Japs up there can’t see shit. At first light, we give ’em hell, quick and simple.”
“Negative, Sergeant. My men will be capturing airfields tonight, not waiting for artillerymen to save them.”
“Sir, your men gonna be dying in droves if we try to hold this low ground with them guns staring down on us. We’re just fish in a fucking barrel. Won’t be enough of us left by sundown tomorrow to hold jackshit.”
“Oh, come now, Sergeant. That’s just a little bit—”
“That’s the God’s honest truth, sir, that’s what it is…and since I reckon their maps are as fucked up as ours, I’d rather have our artillery putting some direct fire rounds exactly where I want them than some pilot or swabbie putting them where he thinks I want them.”
Patchett wasn’t sure if the silence that came over Billingsley meant the man was thinking or sulking. He blew a sigh of relief when the colonel finally said, “Fine, we’ll bring up the artillery. But make sure our evening situation report to regiment states clearly that our troops are holding the Mokmer airfields.”
Pat
chett smiled; it would be an administrative lie well worth the lives saved. “Affirmative, sir,” he replied as he told himself, Yeah, we’re holding it all right, provided we don’t dare come out from under cover. And it don’t matter what bullshit we write…it ain’t gonna fool Colonel Molloy. He’s got hisself two good eyes.
High atop the bluffs overlooking the airfields, Bogater Boudreau had an idea. “Get me that spool of lacing cord Bailey’s carrying,” he told his radioman, “and get Captain Pop up here. I gotta show him something real quick.”
“Sarge, shouldn’t we be whispering?” the radioman asked. “There’s Japs right down there below us.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Boudreau replied. “They’re crammed into a cave, firing a big, loud gun. Their ears are ringing so bad they can’t hear shit.”
When Theo Papadakis arrived, Boudreau was already well into the test phase of his plan. “That cave right below us,” he told the captain, “can’t be more than fifty or sixty feet down.” Something was dangling down the cliff’s face from the spool of cord Bogater held in his hands. Papadakis peered over the edge and saw what it was: a cluster of hand grenades, hanging right above the top edge of the cave opening, perfectly in line with the protruding barrel of its 40-millmeter gun—and invisible to the gunners inside.
“What do you think, sir? A hell of a lot better than waiting for the Navy or some flyboy to put one on the money.”
“How many grenades you got tied there, Bogater?”
“Four, sir. Any more than that gets a little unwieldy.” He started reeling the grenades back up.
“So you want to lower those grenades down in front of the cave mouth? How you gonna pull the pins?”
“I’m gonna pull them first, sir,” Boudreau replied. “Then Moose Jorgensen here is gonna heave the whole bunch like he’s throwing a runner out at home from center field. As they start to fall, the cord’ll go tight…and swing those sumbitches right into the cave. Should be just about the right amount of time for the fuzes to blow, too.” He played out more cord, measuring it against his forearm. “I’m adding about five feet to the total length, to make sure them string bombs swing inside the cave.”
Boudreau plunged his bayonet into a crack in the rocky ledge at the spot he’d first dangled the grenades. “There…that oughta be straight above them bastards.” He tied the spool end of the cord to the bayonet grip, then coiled the length that would carry the grenades carefully on the ground.
Jorgensen held the grenades—his arm cocked, ready to throw—as two men stood by to pull their safety pins.
Bogater told Papadakis, “Say the word, sir.”
“Wait until they shoot again,” Papadakis replied, “so we know they’ll be huddled up real close to the gun.”
They only had to wait a few moments. The report of the 40 millimeter echoed up the cliff. Papadakis said, “Let her rip, boys.”
The pins were pulled, and Jorgensen gave a mighty heave. The cluster of grenades was launched high into the air…
One one thousand…
And then began to arc downward.
Two one thousand…
The coiled cord played out quickly and smoothly.
Three one thousand, four one thousand...
The grenades vanished into the cave mouth.
Five one thousand…
The sound of the explosion was soft and disappointing—just a muted poom—but the jet of hot gases that blew from the cave looked more like the blowhole exhalation of a giant whale.
Scraps of wood and gear were blown out and began the long tumble to the plain below.
Two Japanese gunners were blown out, too. The GIs perched on the ledge watched them plummet like sacks all the way to the ground.
Bogater said, “They ain’t thrashing around like no man alive would.”
The barrel of the 40 millimeter still protruded from the cave mouth but it was unmoving, lifeless.
Captain Papadakis said, “I think we can take out two or three more of those guns the same way.”
“Yeah,” Bogater replied, reeling up the scorched and severed end of the cord. “A couple more, for sure. The rest are too far down for this little trick to work.”
“Hmm…yeah. Makes me wonder, though. You suppose the Japs ever come out of those caves?”
“Not in daylight, that’s for damn sure,” Bogater said. “Maybe they slide down ropes at night or something. It sure as hell don’t look like they climb up here. Wish they would, though. Make killing ’em a whole hell of a lot easier.”
The C-45 transport plane shuddered to a stop on the ramp at Wakde Island, seeming just as relieved as its occupants the flight from Hollandia was over. If they’d tried to land a few minutes later, the airfield would have been hidden in darkness. As it was, they came back to an earth shrouded in the deep shadows of dusk.
“I had one hell of a time feeling around for the ground,” the pilot said as he and Jock climbed out of the plane. “And this damn thing…if you don’t fly it all the way to the chocks, it’ll ground loop on you or prang itself in a heartbeat.”
“Then I guess you did a hell of a job, Lieutenant,” Jock replied. “Thanks for the ride.”
Jock’s desk at photo recon shop looked like a dump truck had backed up to it and unloaded piles of folders, aerial photographs, and drafts of topographic maps in progress. He took that as a good sign: If they thought I was dead, the desk would’ve been cleaned out…or some enterprising soul would have “appropriated” it already. There was enough work there to keep him busy for weeks.
But there was something he had to do first. He began drafting a message to Jillian back at Hollandia. It took several tries—tearing up page after page of discarded words—until it was as concise as protocol demanded:
Is mapmaker’s name Dyckman? If so, tell her father is alive. I know where he is. Maybe that will change her mind? Urgent. We need her.
He felt foolish for how long it had taken him to connect the dots:
That mapmaker’s got to be Dyckman’s daughter. I mean, how many fucking cartographers could there have been on a little rock like Biak, let alone female ones? Maybe I was starting to believe his whole family was dead, too. Wouldn’t that be hot shit, after I was the one telling him not to lose hope.
At the Wakde radio station, the communications officer on duty frowned as he looked at the message Jock had just handed him. “This is civilian affairs stuff, sir,” the commo officer said. “That’s pretty low priority. It may not even get sent for a couple of days. Maybe you should just put it in an envelope and send it with the dispatches.”
He tried to hand Jock a manila envelope, which was promptly batted away. Dispatch pouches were slower than GI mail.
Jock leaned across the desk, close enough this Air Force captain sloughing him off could feel his hot breath on his face. “It’s damn high priority to the GIs getting their asses shot off on Biak…and it’s a hell of a lot more important than those stacks of flyboy requests for pillows and sun tan oil your people are sending right now. Here’s the deal, Captain…either this message goes out tonight or you can explain to General Kenney why it didn’t.”
Dropping Kenney’s name was a risky move. The 5th Air Force Commander didn’t know Jock from Adam. He probably had only the vaguest notion of what Jock’s job at his headquarters was, too; there was a thick layer of staff between them.
And an Air Force commander probably couldn’t give a shit less about maps for us dogfaces.
But the bluff worked. The commo officer began to sputter as he shuffled papers on his desk.
“So that’s a yes, Captain?”
“Ahh…yes, sir. Your message will be copied in Hollandia within the hour.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Sun’s almost up, y’all,” Patchett said as his foot nudged the sleeping artilleryman. “Get your boys on them guns and let’s do the deed.”
The gunners tried to rub the sleep out of their eyes—the little they’d gotten, anyway, after driv
ing up from the beach and digging in their 105-millimeter howitzers in the pitch dark of night. They’d dug the guns’ trails in deep: they remembered the last time their battery shot direct fire. One of the pieces had reared up so violently from the recoil, her spades hopped out of the shallow holes her crew had dug, allowing the piece to rocket backwards. As she did, the trails of the loose cannon smashed into one of her own crewmen, shattering his leg below the knee.
The artillerymen hustled to their positions. They knew the sooner they got done with this task, the sooner they could rejoin their battery, nestled in a far less hazardous location a mile or so behind the lines. Rounds were assembled and lined up, ready to fire.
“Here’s the way it’s gonna be, men,” Patchett said. “That gentleman standing right there is Captain Grossman. Him and me’ll identify them targets for you, since ain’t a one of you got a fucking clue where they are in them cliffs. The sun’s gonna be up behind ’em in a couple minutes. That’ll light us up like Christmas but those caves will still be hiding in shadow. Now like I told y’all before, Able Company is on the high ground above them Jap guns. When Captain Grossman gives ’em the word, they’re gonna drop illum with their mortars down the face of the cliffs. That’ll blind the Japs a little and light them up for our first-round hits.”
The artillerymen seemed surprised at the confident proclamation of first-round hits. “It may take a little more than one round a target,” a section chief said.
“Bull-fucking-shit,” Patchett replied. “Y’all gonna know exactly how far those li’l ol’ caves are, ’cause we had all day yesterday to triangulate them. Just put the fucking range mark in that scope of yours on it and pull the damn lanyard.”
“It ain’t quite that exact, Sarge,” the section chief replied.
“It better fucking be that exact, numbnuts, because once you pop off a round, them Japs gonna know exactly where you are, too. It’s kill or be killed, son. I’d advise you to go with the former.”
Operation Fishwrapper (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 5) Page 16